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It’s hard to say whether “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” about a group of teenagers who turn into videogame characters, is a sequel to the 1995 Robin Williams hit “ Jumanji ,” a remake, a reboot, or something else. But it’s definitely the kind of movie that works the name of a classic rock song into its title and makes sure to blast it during the end credits, so that people who were in their twenties during the 1990s and now have kids of their own (and probably took them to this film) can feel that Pavlovian tingle. 

That description makes the new “Jumanji” sound like a cash-grab, and in lot of ways it is—studios are so enamored with the notion that pre-existing intellectual properties are box office insurance that they’re far more likely to greenlight this than something genuinely new, even though exactly no one has spent the last two decades saying, “I wish somebody would make another ‘Jumanji.’” At the same time, though, this is a likable, funny diversion, and sometimes more than that. It has enough twists and surprises to pull viewers along, despite the fact that writer-director Jake Kasdan ’s story (co-written with four people) is ultimately not much meatier than the one from a 1990s videogame that the characters end up inhabiting after getting sentenced to a “Breakfast Club”-type detention at school. (In the original film, the titular diversion is an old-fashioned board game, just like in the source material, Chris van Allsburg’s popular children’s book.)

The protagonists here are Spencer ( Alex Wolff ), an earnest nerd; Spencer’s onetime best friend Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain), a football star who ends up grounded after authorities realize Alex wrote a homework assignment for him; Bethany ( Madison Iseman ), a classic snotty Heather-type who’s addicted to her smartphone and takes selfies constantly; and the bookish, socially anxious Martha ( Morgan Turner ). They all have insecurities and issues. Once they end up inside the Jumanji videogame, these same characters are played by Dwayne Johnson (as Spencer the nerd); Kevin Hart (as Fridge the jock); Karen Gillan (as the super-fit avatar of Martha), and Jack Black , of all people, as Bethany. There are supposed to be five characters in the game-space, though, and we meet the fifth in due time: Alex Vreeke ( Nick Jonas ), who is introduced as an energetic teenager in the film’s 1996 prologue, only to get sucked into the game and become The Local Missing Boy whose endlessly grieving family still lives in their now-decrepit house. 

The body-switching gag threatens to wear out its welcome quickly ( hah ha, the scrawny nerd looks like Dwayne Johnson now, and the awkward girl has washboard abs! ), but the actors take their assignments to play teenagers so seriously that the film surfs along on a wave of poker-faced earnestness, mixing moments of pathos in with its super-broad slapstick. (Except for Dan Castellaneta ’s Homer Simpson, nobody screams in pain more hilariously than Kevin Hart.) At certain points you might feel as though you’re watching the longest, most lavishly produced “ Saturday  Night Live” sketch ever, complete with lush jungle scenery (the film was shot partly on location in Hawaii) and attacks by CGI hippos, rhinos, monkeys, crocodiles and the like. But since the entire thing plays like a 10-year old’s Disney Channel fantasy of what adolescence will be like, it works well enough, especially when coupled with intense discussions of the game’s rules (how many lives you get, how many levels there are, how to lift the curse from the land, etc). 

Both the videogame’s construction and its gender politics are very ‘90s. The movie is aware of this and makes fun of it, though there’s a bit of an eat-your-cake-and-have-it-too aspect to the way it puts Johnson and Gillan's bodies on display. There are occasional jolts of mayhem, thanks mainly to the motorcycle-riding ninjas who do the bidding of the movie’s villain John Van Pelt ( Bobby Cannavale ), a demonic figure who wants to control the Jaguar’s Eye and claim dominion over the land. The action scenes are constructed with a bit of panache and manage to be exciting though you’re never seriously worried that any major character is going to lose all of their lives. Kasdan, a veteran filmmaker who happens to be the son of “ Raiders of the Lost Ark ” and “ The Empire Strikes Back ” screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan , has an old-school sense of how to build those kinds of sequences. The shots are thoughtfully composed, for the most part, and you always know where you are and what's at stake from moment to moment.

The script’s scenarios allow for charming, often faintly surreal funny character moments, as when Black’s round yet flouncy Bethany instructs Gillan’s super-fit but still physically awkward Martha on how to be sexy. Black’s "hey, sailor" walk evokes Bugs Bunny in drag, and Gillan’s subsequent “seductive” dance to distract some guards looks as if she’s trying to shake sand out of her shorts while simultaneously dealing with a bad case of swimmer’s ear. The film doesn’t have the nerve to follow some of its more subversive ideas (such as Bethany lusting after Alex) to their logical conclusions, probably because this is an expensive project that’s terrified of alienating a certain sector of the public (imagine the walkouts if Jack Black lip-locked with Nick Jonas in something other than a CPR situation). But it’s still more surprising in more ways than it had to be, and the performers are clearly having such fun playing insecure teenagers that you stay involved even when the thinness of the enterprise becomes undeniable. This is a two-and-a-half star movie, honestly, bumped up a notch because the actors are likable, the film doesn’t have a cruel thought in its head, and the sentimental finale feels earned.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

Rated PG-13

119 minutes

Dwayne Johnson as Dr. Smolder Bravestone

Jack Black as Professor Shelly Oberon

Kevin Hart as Moose Finbar

Karen Gillan as Ruby Roundhouse

Nick Jonas as Alex

Rhys Darby as Nigel

Alex Wolff as Spencer

Madison Iseman as Bethany

Marc Evan Jackson as Principal Bentley

• Jake Kasdan
• Chris McKenna
• Scott Rosenberg
• Jeff Pinkner

Cinematography

• Gyula Pados

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‘Jumanji: The Next Level’: Film Review

The jungle game grows ever more elaborate now that this action-comedy franchise has found its footing, mixing and matching players with their avatars.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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When Sony dusted off its 22-year-old “Jumanji” movie for a distant sequel in 2017, it looked to some as though Hollywood had hit rock bottom in terms of pillaging its own properties. In fact, “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” proved to be that rare reboot that built upon its initial high concept — a jungle-themed board game that takes over a family’s living room — with a clever new riff in which four mismatched teens, thrust together in detention, are sucked into an old-school video game console, assigned to avatars who are nothing like their real-world personalities.

It was like “The Breakfast Club” with a 21st-century twist, where the nerd becomes Dwayne Johnson ’s brawny hero, the popular girl winds up stuck in Jack Black ’s body, and so on. More often than not, effects-driven blockbusters get dumber as the series go along, but “ Jumanji: The Next Level ” invents some fun ideas to keep things fresh, suggesting that Columbia Pictures is committed to treating the property as a proper franchise — right down to the final scene, which teases an even wilder direction for the story to go from here.

That movie looks like a blast. In the meantime, however, director Jake Kasdan had to make a choice: Either he could conjure a new mix of characters to go on virtual safari, or he could bring back the original players and switch up the alter egos with whom they’re paired in the video game world. Kasdan decides to do both. Collaborating with returning co-writers Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg on the script, the helmer reassembles the four unlikely friends, back home for the holidays. Rather than stop there, the script also introduces a couple newbies in the form of Danny DeVito and Danny Glover, playing crotchety ex-business partners Eddie and Milo, estranged for 15 years, who happen to be in the house when that cursed cartridge zaps everyone into its perilous parallel reality.

Just before that happens, we learn that the romance between awkward, asthmatic Spencer (Alex Wolff) — the one who got to be “The Rock” last time around — and shy girl Madison (Morgan Turner) didn’t survive freshman year of college, whereas football player Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) and social media-obsessed Bethany (Madison Iseman) seem to be thriving in their respective post-high-school pursuits. The filmmakers had to come up with some reason for them to reenter the game, settling on the notion that Spencer, feeling like a worthless weakling, wanted to spend some more time as the strong, fast, and fearless Dr. Smolder Bravestone.

The game has other plans, which are better left unspoiled here, although it might have been nice for “The Next Level” to explore Spencer’s underlying psychology a bit more. The last two “Jumanji” outings appeal to a collective cultural nostalgia for ’90s-era video games, poking fun at the technical limitations and clichéd aspects of that experience (bad exposition, underwritten supporting characters, silly situations). What they ignore is the near-addictive way such games’ more sophisticated successors have come to dominate the lives of those who play them.

What if Spencer, instead of just firing up the dangerous old game on a whim, had been playing it by himself all this time, to the extent that the others had to stage an intervention — by going in after him? There’s no room for anything so serious in “The Next Level,” which instead wants to amuse us with the possibility that its characters might be assigned to different avatars, providing the movie stars who play them an opportunity to channel different (and in some cases, multiple) personalities.

The best thing about “Welcome to the Jungle” was watching Johnson poke fun at his own persona by pretending to be a meek kid suddenly blessed with a movie-star bod and the allure (or “smoldering intensity”) to match. Here, through a fluke of the system that bypasses the character-selection stage, it’s Spencer’s grandpa Eddie (DeVito) who lands in Bravestone’s shoes, while slow-talking fellow oldster Milo (Glover) gets to be Franklin “Mouse” Finbar ( Kevin Hart ).

Johnson’s easily the most bankable action star in Hollywood right now, but he’s got an incredibly narrow range, and asking him to do a Danny DeVito impersonation has unintentionally hilarious results. At times, he seems to be doing a British accent; at others, he sounds like a cross between Barbra Streisand and Elaine Stritch. It boggles the mind: Did Johnson actually spend any time with DeVito developing the character? Was his entire performance based on another actor, who was then recast after Johnson’s part was in the can?

Hart does a better job of convincing us that his know-it-all zoologist has been possessed by a rambling old fogey, who parcels out key facts too slowly to be of any use, while Black (whose default setting is “overacting”) exaggerates the frustration that a black athlete like Fridge would feel trapped in the position of an out-of-shape white guy such as Shelly Oberon, the group’s map-reading (but otherwise useless) comic relief. Somehow, Madison managed to return to the same avatar she had before, Lara Croft-like teammate — and “killer of men” — Ruby Roundhouse, although another twist slightly later in the story will allow players to swap avatars. The sequel also gets a couple new characters, including a cat burglar named Ming, played by Awkwafina, who proves the most entertaining in her multiple-personality reinterpretations of the role.

Clearly, “The Next Level” could be confusing for anyone who hasn’t seen the original (references to cake as one of Mouse’s weaknesses serve as an inside joke to returning viewers), although it helps that Milo and Eddie don’t understand what’s happening to them, allowing the others to shout the rules as they go along. If you’ve ever tried to play a video game with someone of your grandparents’ generation, you’ll appreciate the exasperation the repeat players feel toward these absurd exchanges — which mirror how any catch-up conversation would go in which “Jumanji” fans tried to explain the plot of this movie to an oblivious older relative.

“Jumanji” may have begun as a jungle game, but now it’s expanded to include David Lean-ian desert challenges (a dune buggy chase from a herd of angry ostriches) and an elaborate medieval finale plainly inspired by “Game of Thrones” (right down to the casting of Rory McCann as grimy new villain Jurgen the Brutal). Kasdan amps up the violence and intensity in “The Next Level,” although the players each have three lives apiece, which undermines the stakes of all that flashy computer-generated peril — a plus for younger audiences, assuming parents don’t take issue with death being treated as a joke.

For the most part, the film’s values are in the right place, and apart from a few off-color bits (about penis size and sexual prowess), the humor serves the greater goal of looking past one’s physical limitations and respecting friendships in whatever form they take. The storytelling may be sloppy in parts, but the cast’s collective charisma more than compensates. As the saying goes: Don’t hate the players, hate the game.

Reviewed at The Grove, Los Angeles, Dec. 9, 2019. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 123 MIN.

• Production: A Sony Pictures Entertainment release of a Columbia Pictures, Matt Tolmach Prods., Radar Pictures, Seven Bucks Prods. production. Producers: Matt Tolmach, Jake Kasdan, Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia. Executive producers: David Householter, Melvin Mar, Scott Rosenberg, Jeff Pinkner, William Teitler, Ted Field, Mike Weber.
• Crew: Director: Jake Kasdan. Screenplay: Kasdan, Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg, based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg. Camera (color, widescreen): Gyula Pados. Editors: Steve Edwards, Mark Helfrich, Tara Timpone. Music: Henry Jackman.
• With: Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan
• Music By: , Nick Jonas, Awkwafina, Alex Wolff, Morgan Turner,  Ser'Darius Blain, Madison Iseman, Danny Glover, Danny DeVito.

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Den of Geek

Jumanji: The Next Level Review

The sequel to 2017’s improbable blockbuster offers more of the same, for which your mileage may vary.

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Although the original Jumanji was a decent-sized hit in 1995, no one was expecting 2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle to clear $400 million at the U.S. box office alone and nearly a billion worldwide. But evidently there was a lot of nostalgic good will for the brand, and love for its lead actors. While  Welcome to the Jungle  no one’s idea of a great movie, it was passable fantasy entertainment that paid dutiful homage to its predecessor and coasted largely on the charisma of its game cast.

Such unprecedented success for an IP that had been largely dormant for two decades was not going to slip away without Sony Pictures cashing in for all it’s worth, so here we are two years later with Jumanji: The Next Level cued up at theaters everywhere. And if we sound like we emphasizing the business side of the film more than usual, that’s because The Next Level is a perfect example of a corporate cash cow designed to replicate the exact formula that made the last entry work, with an extra wrinkle or two. It’s intermittently enjoyable, again leans on its cast, and fizzles away in one’s memory like Alka-Seltzer.

The Next Level (directed again by Jake Kasdan) begins with an update on our four friends from the first film: Spencer (Alex Wolff) is away at college in New York City but misses Brantford, New Hampshire, his new(ish) girlfriend Martha (Morgan Turner) and friends Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) and Bethany (Madison Iseman), all of whom shared the previous film’s adventure inside the Jumanji video game. Yet he doesn’t go to meet his friends when he arrives back home for the holidays, instead deciding to go down to his basement and, against his better judgment, putter with the broken pieces of the Jumanji console.

Sure enough, Spencer goes missing and it’s up to the other three to find him. But before they can even select their avatars, they are sucked into the world of Jumanji, this time joined by Spencer’s grandfather Eddie (Danny DeVito) and Eddie’s estranged friend Milo (Danny Glover), who just happened to pick this day to stop by and try to mend fences with his former business partner. When they get back into the game, only Martha is once again inhabiting the same avatar she was in previously, scantily clad commando Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan); Eddie is now inside man-mountain team leader Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), while Fridge has taken over as Professor Oberon (Jack Black), and Milo is inhabiting “Mouse” Finbar (Kevin Hart). Bethany, meanwhile, has mysteriously not joined the game at all.

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In addition to finding Spencer, the team must get their hands on a mystical stone that has been seized by a warlord with a connection to Bravestone’s past. But really, the mechanics of the plot are completely slight and unimportant, merely serving as a loose connective thread for a series of crazy adventures involving new animals, daring escapes, and high-kicking battles. Meanwhile, the comedy comes mostly from watching Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart do impersonations of DeVito and Glover respectively, with varying degrees of effectiveness.

read more: Knvies Out – When Murder Makes You a Better Person

There are a few more surprises along the way, with Bethany enlisting an old friend to help her get back in the game and Awkwafina showing up as a new avatar named Ming. But for the most part, there’s very little that’s new in the way of character development, and a lot of time spent with Eddie and Milo as they test out their new bodies and work through their issues, all while dodging massive flocks of giant ostriches and a nasty army of vicious baboons. Wittingly or not, Jumanji: The Next Level functions more or less like a video game does, repeating much of what captivated about the first film with a few twists.

Hart gets some mileage out of playing a version of Danny Glover, but Johnson is less natural trying to do his interpretation of a grumpy Danny DeVito. In fact, Johnson takes a bit of a step back through the film’s first two-thirds, allowing Black, Hart, and Gillan to carry more of the load this time. All three get the job done, with Black on point as usual and Gillan having a more take-charge approach–even getting to put on a few more sensible clothes as the gang heads into a wintry climate.

read more: In Defense of Zathura, the Forgotten Jumanji Sequel

When all is said and done, Jumanji: The Next Level manages to make two hours pass pleasantly enough but has little happening under the surface. There are some genuinely exciting moments–like the aforementioned fight with the baboons on a swinging, tilting set of bridges–and a few good laughs as well. It’s as slight as the last film, and leaves some interesting ideas unexplored, but it will serve as popcorn fare for families looking for something to see before or after Star Wars . And yes, before it gets too deep into the end credits, it sets up a sequel.

Jumanji: The Next Level is out in theaters this Friday, Dec. 13.

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Don Kaye is a Los Angeles-based entertainment journalist and associate editor of Den of Geek. Other current and past outlets include Syfy, United Stations Radio Networks, Fandango, MSN, RollingStone.com and many more. Read more of his work here. Follow him on Twitter @donkaye

Don Kaye | @donkaye

Don Kaye is an entertainment journalist by trade and geek by natural design. Born in New York City, currently ensconced in Los Angeles, his earliest childhood memory is…

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Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle Is Good, Clean Fun

Looking for a lively, wholesome movie to see with the family this holiday season? The obvious choice is The Greatest Showman , the musical that demonstrates how circus impresario P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman) didn’t exploit “freaks” by charging people money to point at them and jeer — he actually gave them a sense of self-worth! My colleague Emily Yoshida dissects the “incredibly specious empowerment metaphor holding up this rinky-dink tent” with painful accuracy — and should get combat pay for attempting to transcribe the numbskull lyrics. Move on to the next screen at the multiplex (plug your ears if you’re passing The Greatest Showman ) and see Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle . The movie has amusingly broad performances; good, bloodless scares (the characters die horribly — but have multiple lives); and self-empowering life lessons too bland to be specious. You could do far worse.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a sequel to and not a remake of the agreeable 1995 Jumanji (starring Robin Williams and the young Kirsten Dunst) based on Chris Van Allsburg’s wonderful 1981 book. In the 1995 film, players of the mysterious board game Jumanji found their reality invaded by sundry animal, human, and insect predators. In the 21st-century version, four very different kinds of teenagers in detention — yes, it’s a Breakfast Club redux — get whisked into a jungle cyberworld where they find themselves inhabiting wildly inapposite avatars.

The upshot is that Dwayne Johnson (playing a nerd who finds himself in Dwayne Johnson’s body) gazes on his own humongous biceps with the same kind of amazement that the rest of us do, while Karen Gillan (the repository of the brainy misfit girl) looks down at her impossibly long legs as if thinking, “How do I walk on these things?” Jack Black (inhabited by a blonde high-school girl) simpers in horror at his own squat reflection, while the diminutive pop-top Kevin Hart — the avatar of a black kid built like a linebacker — screams, “Where’s the rest of me?”

The plot is by the numbers, but that’s okay since the characters are inside a game in which the plot is by the numbers. They need to work together to survive various lethal obstacles (rhinos, hippos, wildcats, Bobby Cannavale) and restore a precious gem to its rightful place atop a mountain. If they don’t, they’ll be stuck in the game forever. The proof is in the form of Nick Jonas as the avatar of a guy who has been there since 1996, when someone evidently found the Jumanji board game that was tossed away in Jumanji .

If director Jake Kasdan will never be confused for an action stylist, he’ll never be taken for a stumblebum, either. He hits his marks. And who cares if the CGI looks artificial? It’s an artificial world. Actually, I wish that Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle had looked even more artificial — that Kasdan had pushed the boundaries. Why stick with the jungle when there could have been multiple settings — Camelot, the Old West, outer space? Maybe those will be the sequels. Can the filmmakers come up with new ways to showcase Johnson’s pecs?

It’s fun to watch Johnson use the sight of his own body to teach himself not to run screaming from peril and get up the nerve to kiss Gillan, who has to learn to smolder like a femme fatale, as well as come to terms with her sudden talent for martial arts. (Gillan is a superb physical comedian — it’s as if she’s standing outside herself watching her own body kick ass.) All the characters have to learn that they “only get one life,” even though they actually get three, which comes off as a mixed message. The Greatest Showman lyricists would have tried to make a song out of that:

You only get one life/

Or maybe three/

So go and ride your light/

Into a tree/

’Cause you’ll come back again/

And get eaten by a rhino/

La-la-la albino …

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Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle review – fantasy romp likably upgraded for gamer generation

Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Karen Gillan and Kevin Hart have fun in a video-game world in an amiable sequel-by-numbers with a body-swap twist

T he 90s family adventure Jumanji was a fantasy romp about children being whooshed into the universe of a magical board game, where a former kid player played by Robin Williams had grown to adulthood, having been marooned there. The film seemed to be using the grammar and rhetoric of video-gaming, which is about getting from one level to another by not getting killed.

Now it has been upgraded for 2017 in a way that makes the gaming idea explicit, and yet also as quaint and antique as board games might have looked in 1995. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a big, brash, amiable entertainment with something of Indiana Jones, plus the body-swap comedy of Freaky Friday, or F Anstey’s Victorian classic Vice Versa. It features an endearing performance from Dwayne Johnson who, as a teen wimp magicked into a giant Herculean body, has to look nervy and nerdy and say things like “Oi vey”.

As before, there is a slightly cursory introductory sequence, but now it is set in the 90s. A weird-looking board game is discovered on a beach – it contains a game cartridge, a kid tries playing and he is spirited within. Flash forward to the present day, and four high-school teens – Instagram princess Bethany (Madison Iseman), earnest student Spence (Alex Wolff), alienated indie kid Martha (Morgan Turner) and humongous football star Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) – are in trouble at school for various reasons. As a punishment they are made to clear out an old store room that contains this strange video-game Jumanji. Bored and slightly curious, they plug it in to an old monitor and randomly choose their digital avatars. Spence goes for Dr Smolder Bravestone, Bethany opts for Professor Shelly Oberon, Fridge goes for zoologist Moose Finbar and Martha chooses biologist Ruby Roundhouse.

And then, wham: they are spirited into this Inception-ary world: a vast, threatening jungle landscape. To his chagrin, Fridge finds that his body belongs to a quiveringly diminutive guy, played by querulous, panicky Kevin Hart. Martha finds that she is now a total babe, played by Karen Gillan . Spence finds that he inhabits the body of man-mountain Dwayne Johnson, who rather sweetly impersonates someone who thinks of himself as a seven-stone weakling. But most traumatised is Bethany, who finds that Professor Shelly is a man – a portly, cowardly scientist played by Jack Black. There are amusing scenes in which Shelly must get used to urinating with a penis, and deal with those moments in which one’s penis can give away private emotional turmoil. It’s a nice performance from Black.

Our quirky quartet have to battle huge rhinos, vast hippos, horrible snakes and a sinister baddie to restore a magic jewel to an occult statue. In this way, they will win the game and escape from the world of Jumanji. But they must also find that long-lost castaway player from the 90s, who uses phrases such as “da bomb” and thinks that Cindy Crawford is the epitome of beauty.

It’s a likable film which borrows liberally from everything and everyone, and if it’s put together by numbers, well, then it is done capably enough. There are some nice lines: I liked Ruby airily claiming that microbiology is one of her favourite biologies. Perhaps it is destined to be seen on small screens for sleepovers, but it’s an amiable effort that will go down like eggnog over Christmas.

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‘jumanji’: thr’s 1995 review.

On Dec. 15, 1995, TriStar unveiled the Robin Williams starrer in theaters.

By Michael Rechtshaffen

Michael Rechtshaffen

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On Dec. 15, 1995, TriStar unveiled the Robin Williams starrer Jumanji in theaters, where it would go on to gross $262 million globally and eventually kickstart a franchise. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below:

Call it “Game Story.”

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And while all the parts never seem to form a cohesive whole and the rampaging critters may be a little intense for younger viewers, Jumanji holds enough distractions along the way to keep audiences occupied.

Boxoffice results should be respectable but TriStar probably shouldn’t expect a stampede.

Young Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce play Judy and Peter, two freshly orphaned siblings who move with their Aunt Nora (Bebe Neuwirth) into an abandoned New England mansion with a spooky past.

Some 26 years earlier, 12-year-old Alan Parrish vanished from that house while playing Jumanji, a very strange board game he found buried in a construction site.

Discovering the game in an attic, Judy and Peter pick up where Alan left off, and in the process conjure up swarms of giant insects, crazed monkeys, indoor monsoons and Alan himself, sprung from Jumanji’s dark jungles a quarter of a century later, looking just like Robin Williams.

Director Joe Johnston is a natural for this kind of stuff, having made Honey, I Shrunk the Kids a surprise smash for Disney. Here he demonstrates the same flair for keeping the barrage of visual effects and the light comedic human performances in harmony.

Unfortunately he’s stuck with a script that runs off in more directions than its stampeding menagerie and includes a clunky prologue resulting in several false starts.

Still, it’s fun to see Williams, in Peter Pan mode here, pairing off with the always entertaining Bonnie Hunt (as his former childhood playmate); while youngsters Dunst and Pierce admirably hold their own.

Working overtime are the special visual effects and animation, courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic, which are certainly entertaining if not quite convincing.

Wonder what they’d be able to do with Twister . — Michael Rechtshaffen, originally published Dec. 7, 1995.

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Review: ‘Jumanji: The Next Level’ is more of a retread than an upgrade

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Two years ago, amid the glut of a busy holiday movie season, I opted not to review “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.” You won’t read a less interesting opening sentence in this newspaper, I know, but bear with me. Catching up with the movie several weeks and several hundred million dollars in box office later, I realized that my decision had been — well, not a mistake, exactly. But at the very least, a missed opportunity to weigh in on a surprisingly effective year-end diversion, a studio-engineered cash cow that’s a pretty good time before it more or less evaporates from memory.

As directed by Jake Kasdan, “Welcome to the Jungle” took the mysterious board game introduced in Chris Van Allsburg’s splendid picture book (the basis for the not-so-splendid 1995 Robin Williams movie) and upgraded it into a Nintendo-style console entertainment. Said game then proceeded to suck four teenagers into its virtual safari-themed world, recasting them as fantasy avatars played, in nimbly elastic comic performances, by Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan. It was a body-swap comedy at heart, a movie of gratifyingly analog pleasures beneath the obligatory CGI razzle-dazzle.

And speaking of obligatory: I promised at the time I wouldn’t overlook the sequel, and so, well, here we are. I wish I could muster more enthusiasm, and so, I imagine, did the filmmakers. “Jumanji: The Next Level,” directed by Kasdan from a script he wrote with Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg, is an amiable retread passing itself off as an upgrade. It reunites the original cast and adds some welcome new faces, a couple of fresh conceptual wrinkles, two hair-raising action scenes and some unearned lump-in-the-throat sentimentality. It’s not bad for an hour’s entertainment; too bad it runs for two.

The setup piles a lot of stuff you don’t care about onto a bunch of characters you may not remember. They are Spencer (Alex Wolff), Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain), Bethany (Madison Iseman) and Martha (Morgan Turner), four teens headed home for the holidays after months away at college. Spencer’s feeling bummed out, having recently split from Martha; on hand to offer him some crotchety counsel is his grandfather, Eddie, played by Danny DeVito, who starts applying the comic electrodes in his very first scene. Whether he’s taking a well-timed fall or working wonders with a sleep-apnea machine, DeVito is the kind of effortless comic presence who can enliven even the hoariest premise.

Having DeVito turn into Dwayne Johnson, however, is another story. To sum up: Sad Spencer makes the beyond-imbecilic decision to play Jumanji again, and before long, he and his friends have been sucked back in, this time accompanied by Spencer’s grandpa, Eddie, and his estranged friend and former business partner, Milo (Danny Glover). But to everyone’s confusion, the player-avatar combos have been shaken up this time. Martha, at least, is still the intrepid “killer of men,” Ruby Roundhouse (Gillan), but this time it’s the strapping Fridge who inherits the body of portly professor Dr. Shelby Oberon (Black), while Spencer gets stuck with a brand-new avatar, a wily thief named Ming Fleetfoot (Awkwafina, never not welcome).

Adding to the confusion, Eddie finds himself playing the muscly hero Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Johnson), while Milo is now the diminutive zoologist Mouse Finbar (Hart). Got all that? Really, the proper way to summarize the plot of “Jumanji: The Next Level” would be with a diagram or a flow chart. All you really need to know, since each avatar effectively assumes their player’s personality and mannerisms, is that the Rock gets to chew on a New Jersey accent while Kevin Hart speaks in leisurely run-on sentences for a change. The grumpy-old-men ventriloquist routine feels silly and shoehorned in but, like the random reallocation of avatars or the late-breaking sight of Nick Jonas riding a horse, it does inject a bit of novelty into what would otherwise be an exhaustingly formulaic romp.

The game itself is determined to provide a fresh experience too. As explained by “Jumanji’s” long-winded non-player guide (an amusing Rhys Darby), the plot has gotten an upgrade, demanding that the players work together to steal (yawn) an all-powerful jewel from someone named Jurgen the Brutal (Rory McCann, the Hound on “Game of Thrones”) and his merry band of tundra-dwelling primitives before it’s too late. Beyond the jungle are new worlds of wonder — a desert crawling with killer ostriches, a gorge crawling with killer apes — to discover and nearly expire in. Naturally, the three-life limit is still in effect, promising one comically bloodless death scene after another.

To prevail in the end, our heroes must ensure that they’re fully in sync with their avatars, a task that will require some more in-game body swapping — and will entail the usual low-key body-shaming (poor Jack Black). The actors are as up to the challenge as ever; it’s fun trying to figure out, purely based on gestures and expressions, who’s playing whom. It’s way less fun having to endure Spencer and Martha’s relationship woes or Eddie and Milo’s soggy “Bucket List” routine. If the Jumanji masterminds insist on all this artificial sweetening, can the next level at least be Candy Crush?

‘Jumanji: The Next Level’

Rating: PG-13, for adventure action, suggestive content and some language Running time: 2 hours, 3 minutes Playing: In general release

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Jumanji: The Next Level playfully challenges compulsory identity

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In her famous 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema , Laura Mulvey argued that Hollywood cinema was structured by male gaze and male identification. The male spectator watches some male hero like, say, Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca or Daniel Craig in a Bond film, as he shoots the bad guys, resists the Nazis, saves England, sweeps women off their feet, and looks cool while making things happen. The watcher gets to feel “the power of the male protagonist as he controls events.” The fun of Hollywood film, in Mulvey’s view, is that it gives (mostly) men the chance to pretend to be more powerful men.

Jumanji: The Next Level is aware of this dynamic, and caters to it to some extent. But writer-director Jake Kasdan also offers alternative pleasures. Rather than men identifying with the power of the male protagonist, the movie gives everyone of various genders, races, and ages the chance to identify with everyone else and their horse. The narrative isn’t driven by one male hero, but by the gleeful spectacle of different protagonists picking up identification like a Super Soaker and then spraying it all over each other. Some 45 years after Mulvey’s essay, many action movies do function as a dreary uptight slog of unitary male power. But Jumanji shows there’s more pleasure in moving to a different, more polymorphous, and less predictable level.

The original 1995 Jumanji was an uninspired Robin Williams vehicle about a board game that summons marauding jungle creatures and proceeds to cause chaos in a small town. The 2017 reboot, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle , shared little with its predecessor except the name. A group of kids discover a magic video game which transports them into a jungle setting where they take on the bodies of archetypal adventurers. The hero, nerdy high school loser Spencer Gilpin (Alex Woolf), ends up in the body of muscle-bound, smoldering archaeologist Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson); his love interest, shy nerdy intellectual Martha Kaply (Morgan Turner), transforms into uber-fit man-killer and dance-fighter Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan).

Welcome to the Jungle has a good deal of fun with shuffling identities and identification. Jack Black turns in a hilarious and surprisingly respectful portrayal of popular phone-obsessed teen girl Bethany Walker (Madison Iseman), for example. But ultimately the story is about how Spencer learns to be a man by being projected into the body of a standard sexy, strong, brave male protagonist. The film messes around in the Mulvey script a bit, but doesn’t really challenge it.

That’s why Spencer, at the beginning of The Next Level , finds the idea of returning to Jumanji appealing. His freshman year at college is not going so well; he’s lonely, plagued by self doubt, and his long-distance relationship with Meg is on the rocks. He wants to be cool and strong and empowered again. So he decides to play the game that made him feel that way. He reassembles the circuitry of the video game he and his friends smashed at the end of the last film and returns to that trusty Mulvey narrative, designed to give men the pleasure of being men.

And then everything goes rather wonderfully wrong. Spencer doesn’t end up in Smolder Braveman’s body. Instead, his aging crotchety grandfather Eddie (Danny DeVito) is incredibly confused to find himself with Braveman’s pecs. Spencer’s other friends, determined to rescue him, also end up in different people; sports star Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) becomes portly archaeologist Sheldon Oberon (Jack Black), and Gillan’s Ruby Roundhouse—some characters even find themselves in the body of a horse.

The adventurers do solve puzzles and fight ostriches and mandrills, as you’d expect in an action film. But the inventively choreographed fight scenes and death-defying escapes are really just an excuse to watch the excellent ensemble cast swap mannerisms and pass DeVito’s rasping New Jersey accent back and forth among each other like some hideous contagion of the larynx.

Part of the greatness of the film is the fact that the actors seem to be enjoying themselves so thoroughly. Dwayne Johnson, who is normally stuck as a standard boring heroic male lead, obviously relishes the chance to be the confused grouchy comic relief. Kevin Hart gets to shuffle out of his kinetic wisecracking persona to play Eddie’s slow-talking frenemy and business partner Milo (Danny Glover). There’s no one narrative perspective because no one is a single person. Stars get to be character actors, character actors get to be stars, and gender, race, age, and narrative focus get resolutely swapped and shuffled.

That shuffling is an empowering pleasure in itself. The standard action movie hard-bodied guy who fights and romances and wins is, as Mulvey says, a long-established formula for making screen viewers feel special and strong. But it’s also incredibly limiting and tedious, like eating the same steak for every meal forever, or watching the new James Bond trailer even once. Spencer is somewhat disappointed that he doesn’t get to be the awesome male protagonist. But viewers are encouraged to identify with Bethany, who hugs herself in joy when she’s finally returned to her pudgy but familiar Jack Black body, or with Milo, who’s delighted when he gets shifted into someone completely unexpected.

Yes, identifying with the tough guy can be awesome. But it’s also a charge to identify with someone of various genders who is funny or old or familiar or different. Why would you be a boring dude saving the day when instead you can be Awkwafina channeling Danny DeVito sharing a tender moment with a horse? Mulvey pointed out how rote, predictable, and, of course, sexist Hollywood movies can be. Jumanji: The Next Level cosigns that criticism by providing an alternative. It’s a giddily preposterous celebration of the power of art to put you in someone else’s story—or several someone else’s—all at once.   v

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‘Jumanji’ (1995) Maintains its Magic Over 25 Years Later (Review)

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For anyone who grew up in the ’90s and early 2000s, no other movie could ever replace “Jumanji” (1995) as the best fantasy adventure film. Directed by Joe Johnston, the first-ever installment of “Jumanji” follows the story of siblings Judy and Peter Shepherd who find a mysterious board game that bears the same name as the film. Taken by the mysterious object, the two decide to play it and throw the dice. At every turn, the game summons a variety of creatures the siblings must overcome — from giant mosquitoes and a swarm of monkeys, to a roaring lion and even an adult named Alan Parrish.

As it turns out, Alan Parrish was a kid who got sucked into the game 26 years earlier. In the hopes of finishing the game and restoring everything to normal, the three set out to find Sarah Whittle — the other person who initially played the board game alongside Alan. With each turn spewing enormous and devastating organisms, such as carnivorous vines and herds of animals, the town and house where the siblings just moved in are eventually devastated and overrun by jungle wildlife. The movie ends with Alan dropping the dice, getting the right number, and winning the game.

About a quarter of a century later, the original Jumanji film continues to be a favorite among cinephiles. First and foremost, the film’s plot is incredibly engaging, heartfelt, adventurous, and triumphant. Not only does the film tackle the effects of a family tragedy on children. “Jumanji” also highlights the emotional dissonance that typically takes place between fathers and their sons.

Secondly, many of the effects that made Jumanji pop during its launch were groundbreaking in 1995, to say the least. A large portion of the effects were made through the combination of full-scale animatronics by Amalgamated Dynamics and miniatures by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) — and yet, all the animals that Jumanji released felt and looked real. According to an article by  Screenrant , ILM raised the bar by investing new tools that enabled animators to develop extensive libraries of convincing facial expressions for each animal in the film.

Thirdly, the story was truly brought to life by bright and effective actors.  Robin Williams , who played the adult Alan Parrish, was nominated for Best Actor by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films. Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce, who played Judy Shepherd and Peter Shepherd, respectively, were also nominated for the Best Performance by a Younger Actor Award.

Lastly, the reason Jumanji still holds up even after all these years is because of its significant influence over pop culture. The original Jumanji film inspired a generation of wide-eyed viewers to, as the game’s iconic line goes,  find a way to leave their world behind . The Jumanji franchise kept the magic going by generating three more  film installments  in “Zathura: A Space Adventure” (2005), “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” (2017), and most recently, “Jumanji: The Next Level” (2019).

A fourth film is reportedly in the works, and even outside the world of film, fans have been treated to a three-season run of the “Jumanji” TV series, as well as similarly titled video games for the PlayStation, XBox, as well as Android and iOS apps. A post on  ‘The Movies That Inspired the Slots’ by Gala Spins  adds that gaming giant NetEnt also recently paid tribute to the film with a reel inspired by the eponymous board game, allowing players to roll the dice and move across the board to win rewards. The film has even made its way to a Pachinko game, a type of mechanical game popular in Japan, which further highlights the franchise’s impact across genres and borders.

All this just goes to show how a film can be a  timeless work of art  that lives on from generation to generation. With an outstanding cast, a dedicated special effects and animations team, and a compelling and cleverly conveyed plot, it isn’t surprising that Jumanji is able to stay as one of our favorite movies to this day.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Some thrills, but may be too much for little ones.

A Lot or a Little?

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A distinctly unfriendly community is the setting,

The main characters support each other and help ea

Much-threatened and occasionally carried out, in t

"Damn" here and there.

Parents need to know that Jumanji has lots of thrills and perils but little joy, as monstrous jungle predators pour out of an enchanted board game to overwhelm hapless kids and adults in a depressed New England town. It may be too intense for some kids, although young viewers who aren't nightmare-prone will…

Positive Messages

A distinctly unfriendly community is the setting, with kids who defy and mouth off to adults and pull pranks (though everything comes out right at the end thanks to their intervention).

Positive Role Models

The main characters support each other and help each other survive.

Violence & Scariness

Much-threatened and occasionally carried out, in the form of beatings, bitings, stingings, and stompings mostly by nastied-up members of the animal kingdom. Shooting also threatened by a maniacal hunter.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

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Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Jumanji has lots of thrills and perils but little joy, as monstrous jungle predators pour out of an enchanted board game to overwhelm hapless kids and adults in a depressed New England town. It may be too intense for some kids, although young viewers who aren't nightmare-prone will be diverted by the creatures, computer-generated by the same Hollywood whizzes who brought to life the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park . To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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All time favorite, but you guys didn't include some key notes!

Entertaining all the way through, but can be a bit scary., what's the story.

JUMANJI begins with a 19th century expedition to bury a board game of unexplained origin. In 1969, young Alan happens to dig up the game and plays it. The relic materializes multitudes of hostile African animals, and Alan gets sucked into the jungle-world of the game. More than 25 years later two orphans (Bradley Pierce, Kirsten Dunst ) move into Alan's old house, find the game, and start playing, unleashing a fresh rampage of vicious beasts and Alan (Robin Williams ). Alan is now a full-grown semi-wild man, being tracked by Van Pelt (Jonathan Hyde), a crazed, implacable, old-school safari hunter. The only way to return everything to normal is for the kids to continue playing the game to the end, even though each roll of the dice unleashes more attacking animals, from demonic bats to man-eating plants to a ghastly herd of giant spiders.

Is It Any Good?

There's no sense of wonder, really, just one scare after another, and the fact that the killer Van Pelt is played by the same actor who embodied Alan's snooty father adds another dark note. Young viewers who aren't nightmare-prone might be diverted a little by the computer-generated beasts, which all have a slightly livid, unreal glaze that's fitting for how lurid engravings and drawings of the late 1800s might portray exotic beasts.

But Jumanji' s script is weak, and Williams pretty much plays it straight as the time-displaced, long-marooned Alan. The young actors are good, but there's a heavy undercurrent of continual peril, death, and morbidity, with no breathing room. The ending, in which history is rewritten for all the characters even better than It's a Wonderful Life , seems a little forced, to say the least, and doesn't dispel the general unpleasantness.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what they think makes for a good fantasy adventure film. Was Jumanji funny, or more on the darker side?

If you were going to make this movie, is there anything you'd change, and if so, what?

Which game would you like to see come alive?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 15, 1995
• On DVD or streaming : September 2, 2000
• Cast : Bonnie Hunt , Kirsten Dunst , Robin Williams
• Director : Joe Johnston
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Columbia Tristar
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Adventures , Wild Animals
• Run time : 104 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : violence and scariness
• Last updated : January 26, 2024

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Film Review: “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle”

With a cast as wacky as its narrative, “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” is a remake made in remake heaven.

Feeling nostalgic? Well then, we have good news for you! Recently, a remake was released of the 1995 childhood classic, “Jumanji.” Reconnect with your inner child with the new-and-improved version, “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” which features an unexpected group of notable actors. The main cast consists of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Karen Gillan, Jack Black, and yes, Nick Jonas himself. All of the cast does a phenomenal job of portraying their characters thoroughly. The casting is impeccable — one could not have chosen anyone better than Jack Black to play a popular teenage girl trapped in the body of an overweight middle-aged man. Similarly, no one could have done a better job than Johnson at playing the strong, heroic Dr. Smolder Bravestone. Simply put, the acting in this film has just the right amount of excitement, humor, sincerity, and irony.

The plot of the story is quite similar to that of the original. However, in order to accommodate the interests of a younger generation, the game of Jumanji transforms itself from its original board game style into a video game format. Each person has to pick a character to play the game and they proceed to get sucked into the virtual reality in their chosen character’s body. Four high school kids with differing personalities are trapped into the game of Jumanji, in which they ironically embody a character completely different from themselves. The object of the game is to return a stolen jewel to its rightful place in order to save the land of Jumanji from peril. Each player starts out with three lives that they can use, but if all three lives are lost, the person inhabiting the character also dies in real life. Throughout their quest to save Jumanji, the crew battles monsters and ‘bad guys,’ but in the process, also learns to overcome their inner demons. Despite the intensity of the plot itself — you know, with all the battling monsters and coming face-to-face with death — there is also a medley of funny, sweet, and heartwarming moments.

The juxtaposition of all the players embodying their literal opposites in the game is a humorous spectacle because we can relate to how awkward and confusing it would be for us if we were in their situation. The characters in the movie are relatable to the viewers because watching them make mistakes and embarrass themselves allows us to reflect on and laugh at ourselves. We can view these characters as sort-of representations of ourselves to help us realize that people are complex creatures: nobody is always brave, or always confident, or always funny. The players eventually realize that, while having their character’s superhuman strength or the ability to dance-fight may help in the game, much of the grit that is required to win has to come from within themselves.

While many remakes of classic films often fail to deliver the same level of gratification that the original did, “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” is an exception. The movie was well cast, funny, and relatable, with just the right touch of nostalgia. Treat yourselves to a movie night at your local movie theater, use your student discounts, kick back, and enjoy watching Jack Black crush on Nick Jonas.

Grade: B Director: Jake Kasdan Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, Nick Jonas, Bobby Cannavale Release Date: December, 2017 Rated: PG-13

Image Courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment

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Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

Where to watch.

Watch Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle with a subscription on Hulu, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle uses a charming cast and a humorous twist to offer an undemanding yet solidly entertaining update on its source material.

This reboot won’t blow your mind, but it’s an easy, funny, and action-packed summer flick made much better than it needed to be by standout performances from Jack Black and Kevin Hart.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Jake Kasdan

Dwayne Johnson

Karen Gillan

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Best movies to stream at home, movie news & guides, this movie is featured in the following articles., critics reviews.

AI Index Report

Welcome to the seventh edition of the AI Index report. The 2024 Index is our most comprehensive to date and arrives at an important moment when AI’s influence on society has never been more pronounced. This year, we have broadened our scope to more extensively cover essential trends such as technical advancements in AI, public perceptions of the technology, and the geopolitical dynamics surrounding its development. Featuring more original data than ever before, this edition introduces new estimates on AI training costs, detailed analyses of the responsible AI landscape, and an entirely new chapter dedicated to AI’s impact on science and medicine.

Read the 2024 AI Index Report

The AI Index report tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data related to artificial intelligence (AI). Our mission is to provide unbiased, rigorously vetted, broadly sourced data in order for policymakers, researchers, executives, journalists, and the general public to develop a more thorough and nuanced understanding of the complex field of AI.

The AI Index is recognized globally as one of the most credible and authoritative sources for data and insights on artificial intelligence. Previous editions have been cited in major newspapers, including the The New York Times, Bloomberg, and The Guardian, have amassed hundreds of academic citations, and been referenced by high-level policymakers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, among other places. This year’s edition surpasses all previous ones in size, scale, and scope, reflecting the growing significance that AI is coming to hold in all of our lives.

Steering Committee Co-Directors

Ray Perrault

Steering committee members.

Erik Brynjolfsson

John Etchemendy

Katrina Ligett

Terah Lyons

James Manyika

Juan Carlos Niebles

Vanessa Parli

Yoav Shoham

Russell Wald

Staff members.

Loredana Fattorini

Nestor Maslej

Letter from the co-directors.

A decade ago, the best AI systems in the world were unable to classify objects in images at a human level. AI struggled with language comprehension and could not solve math problems. Today, AI systems routinely exceed human performance on standard benchmarks.

Progress accelerated in 2023. New state-of-the-art systems like GPT-4, Gemini, and Claude 3 are impressively multimodal: They can generate fluent text in dozens of languages, process audio, and even explain memes. As AI has improved, it has increasingly forced its way into our lives. Companies are racing to build AI-based products, and AI is increasingly being used by the general public. But current AI technology still has significant problems. It cannot reliably deal with facts, perform complex reasoning, or explain its conclusions.

AI faces two interrelated futures. First, technology continues to improve and is increasingly used, having major consequences for productivity and employment. It can be put to both good and bad uses. In the second future, the adoption of AI is constrained by the limitations of the technology. Regardless of which future unfolds, governments are increasingly concerned. They are stepping in to encourage the upside, such as funding university R&D and incentivizing private investment. Governments are also aiming to manage the potential downsides, such as impacts on employment, privacy concerns, misinformation, and intellectual property rights.

As AI rapidly evolves, the AI Index aims to help the AI community, policymakers, business leaders, journalists, and the general public navigate this complex landscape. It provides ongoing, objective snapshots tracking several key areas: technical progress in AI capabilities, the community and investments driving AI development and deployment, public opinion on current and potential future impacts, and policy measures taken to stimulate AI innovation while managing its risks and challenges. By comprehensively monitoring the AI ecosystem, the Index serves as an important resource for understanding this transformative technological force.

On the technical front, this year’s AI Index reports that the number of new large language models released worldwide in 2023 doubled over the previous year. Two-thirds were open-source, but the highest-performing models came from industry players with closed systems. Gemini Ultra became the first LLM to reach human-level performance on the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark; performance on the benchmark has improved by 15 percentage points since last year. Additionally, GPT-4 achieved an impressive 0.97 mean win rate score on the comprehensive Holistic Evaluation of Language Models (HELM) benchmark, which includes MMLU among other evaluations.

Although global private investment in AI decreased for the second consecutive year, investment in generative AI skyrocketed. More Fortune 500 earnings calls mentioned AI than ever before, and new studies show that AI tangibly boosts worker productivity. On the policymaking front, global mentions of AI in legislative proceedings have never been higher. U.S. regulators passed more AI-related regulations in 2023 than ever before. Still, many expressed concerns about AI’s ability to generate deepfakes and impact elections. The public became more aware of AI, and studies suggest that they responded with nervousness.

Ray Perrault Co-director, AI Index

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NPR suspends senior editor Uri Berliner after essay accusing outlet of liberal bias

Npr suspended senior editor uri berliner a week after he authored an online essay accusing the outlet of allowing liberal bias in its coverage..

NPR has suspended a senior editor who authored an essay published last week on an online news site in which he argued that the network had "lost America's trust" because of a liberal bias in its coverage, the outlet reported.

Uri Berliner was suspended Friday for five days without pay, NPR reported Tuesday . The revelation came exactly a week after Berliner publicly claimed in an essay for The Free Press, an online news publication, that NPR had allowed a "liberal bent" to influence its coverage, causing the outlet to steadily lose credibility with audiences.

The essay reignited the criticism that many prominent conservatives have long leveled against NPR and prompted newsroom leadership to implement monthly internal reviews of the network's coverage, NPR reported. Berliner's essay also angered many of his colleagues and exposed NPR's new chief executive Katherine Maher to a string of attacks from conservatives over her past social media posts.

In a statement Monday to NPR, Maher refuted Berliner's claims by underscoring NPR's commitment to objective coverage of national issues.

"In America everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen," Maher said. "What matters is NPR's work and my commitment as its CEO: public service, editorial independence, and the mission to serve all of the American public. NPR is independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial interests."

Heat exposure law: Florida joins Texas in banning local heat protections for outdoor workers

Berliner rails against NPR's coverage of COVID-19, diversity efforts

Berliner, a senior business editor who has worked at NPR for 25 years, argued in the Free Press essay that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.”

While he claimed that NPR has always had a "liberal bent" ever since he was hired at the outlet, he wrote that it has since lost its "open-minded spirit," and, hence, "an audience that reflects America."

The Peabody Award-winning journalist highlighted what he viewed as examples of the network's partisan coverage of several major news events, including the origins of COVID-19 and the war in Gaza . Berliner also lambasted NPR's diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies – as reflected both within its newsroom and in its coverage – as making race and identity "paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.”

"All this reflected a broader movement in the culture of people clustering together based on ideology or a characteristic of birth," he wrote.

Uri Berliner's essay fuels conservative attacks on NPR

In response to the essay, many prominent conservatives and Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, launched renewed attacks at NPR for what they perceive as partisan coverage.

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo in particular targeted Maher for messages she posted to social media years before joining the network – her  first at a news organization . Among the posts singled out were  a 2020 tweet that called Trump racist .

Trump reiterated on his social media platform, Truth Social, his longstanding argument that NPR’s government funding should be rescinded.

NPR issues formal rebuke to Berliner

Berliner provided an NPR reporter with a copy of the formal rebuke for review in which the organization told the editor he had not been approved to write for other news outlets, as is required of NPR journalists.

NPR also said he publicly released confidential proprietary information about audience demographics, the outlet reported.

Leadership said the letter was a "final warning" for Berliner, who would be fired for future violations of NPR's policies, according to NPR's reporting. Berliner, who is a dues-paying member of NPR's newsroom union, told the NPR reporter that he is not appealing the punishment.

A spokeswoman for NPR said the outlet declined to comment on Berliner's essay or the news of his suspension when reached Tuesday by USA TODAY.

"NPR does not comment on individual personnel matters, including discipline," according to the statement. "We expect all of our employees to comply with NPR policies and procedures, which for our editorial staff includes the NPR Ethics Handbook ."

NPR staffer express dismay; leadership puts coverage reviews in place

According to the NPR article, Berliner's essay also invoked the ire of many of his colleagues and the reporters whose stories he would be responsible for editing.

"Newsrooms run on trust," NPR political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben said in a post last week on social media site X, though he didn't mention Berliner by name. "If you violate everyone's trust by going to another outlet and [expletive] on your colleagues (while doing a bad job journalistically, for that matter), I don't know how you do your job now."

Amid the fallout, NPR reported that NPR's chief news executive Edith Chapin announced to the newsroom late Monday afternoon that Executive Editor Eva Rodriguez would lead monthly meetings to review coverage.

Berliner expressed no regrets about publishing the essay in an interview with NPR, adding that he tried repeatedly to make his concerns over NPR's coverage known to news leaders.

"I love NPR and feel it's a national trust," Berliner says. "We have great journalists here. If they shed their opinions and did the great journalism they're capable of, this would be a much more interesting and fulfilling organization for our listeners."

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

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Taylor Swift’s ‘Poets’ Arrives With a Promotional Blitz (and a Second LP)

The pop superstar’s latest album was preceded by a satellite radio channel, a word game, a return to TikTok and an actual library. For her fans, more is always welcome.

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By Ben Sisario

Taylor Swift was already the most ubiquitous pop star in the galaxy, her presence dominating the music charts, the concert calendar, the Super Bowl, the Grammys.

Then it came time for her to promote a new album.

In the days leading up to the release of “The Tortured Poets Department” on Friday, Swift became all but inescapable, online and seemingly everywhere else. Her lyrics were the basis for an Apple Music word game . A Spotify-sponsored, Swift-branded “ library installation ,” in muted pink and gray, popped up in a shopping complex in Los Angeles. In Chicago, a QR code painted on a brick wall directed fans to another Easter egg on YouTube. Videos on Swift’s social media accounts, showing antique typewriters and globes with pins, were dissected for clues about her music. SiriusXM added a Swift radio station; of course it’s called Channel 13 (Taylor’s Version).

About the only thing Swift didn’t do was an interview with a journalist.

At this stage in Swift’s career, an album release is more than just a moment to sell music; it’s all but a given that “The Tortured Poets Department” will open with gigantic sales numbers, many of them for “ghost white,” “phantom clear” and other collector-ready vinyl variants . More than that, the album’s arrival is a test of the celebrity-industrial complex overall, with tech platforms and media outlets racing to capture whatever piece of the fan frenzy they can get.

Threads, the newish social media platform from Meta, primed Swifties for their idol’s arrival there, and offered fans who shared Swift’s first Threads post a custom badge. Swift stunned the music industry last week by breaking ranks with her record label, Universal, and returning her music to TikTok, which Universal and other industry groups have said pays far too little in royalties. Overnight, TikTok unveiled “The Ultimate Taylor Swift In-App Experience,” offering fans digital goodies like a “Tortured Poets-inspired animation” on their feed.

Before the album’s release on Friday, Swift revealed that a music video — for “Fortnight,” the first single, featuring Post Malone — would arrive on Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern time. At 2 a.m., she had another surprise: 15 more songs. “I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you,” she wrote in a social media post , bringing “The Anthology” edition of the album to 31 tracks.

“The Tortured Poets Department,” which Swift, 34, announced in a Grammy acceptance speech in February — she had the Instagram post ready to go — lands as Swift’s profile continues to rise to ever-higher levels of cultural saturation.

Her Eras Tour , begun last year, has been a global phenomenon, crashing Ticketmaster and lifting local economies ; by some estimates, it might bring in as much as $2 billion in ticket sales — by far a new record — before it ends later this year. Swift’s romance with the Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has been breathlessly tracked from its first flirtations last summer to their smooch on the Super Bowl field in February. The mere thought that Swift might endorse a presidential candidate this year sent conspiracy-minded politicos reeling .

“The Tortured Poets Department” — don’t even ask about the missing apostrophe — arrived accompanied by a poem written by Stevie Nicks that begins, “He was in love with her/Or at least she thought so.” That establishes what many fans correctly anticipated as the album’s theme of heartbreak and relationship rot, Swift’s signature topic. “I love you/It’s ruining my life,” she sings on “Fortnight.”

Fans were especially primed for the fifth track, “So Long, London,” given that (1) Swift has said she often sequences her most vulnerable and emotionally intense songs fifth on an LP, and (2) the title suggested it may be about Joe Alwyn, the English actor who was Swift’s boyfriend for about six years, reportedly until early 2023 . Indeed, “So Long” is an epic breakup tune, with lines like “You left me at the house by the heath” and “I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free.” Tracks from the album leaked on Wednesday, and fans have also interpreted some songs as being about Matty Healy , the frontman of the band the 1975, whom Swift was briefly linked to last year.

The album’s title song starts with a classic Swift detail of a memento from a lost love: “You left your typewriter at my apartment/Straight from the tortured poets department.” It also name-drops Dylan Thomas, Patti Smith and, somewhat surprisingly given that company, Charlie Puth, the singer-songwriter who crooned the hook on Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again,” a No. 1 hit in 2015. (Swift has praised Wiz Khalifa and that song in the past.)

Other big moments include “Florida!!!,” featuring Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine, in which Swift declares — after seven big percussive bangs — that the state “is one hell of a drug.” Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, the producers and songwriters who have been Swift’s primary collaborators in recent years, both worked on “Tortured Poets,” bringing their signature mix of moody, pulsating electronic tracks and delicate acoustic moments, like a bare piano on “Loml” (as in “love of my life”).

As the ninth LP Swift has released in five years, “Tortured Poets” is the latest entry in a remarkable creative streak. That includes five new studio albums and four rerecordings of her old music — each of which sailed to No. 1. When Swift played SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles in August, she spoke from the stage about her recording spurt, saying that the forced break from touring during the Covid-19 pandemic had spurred her to connect with fans by releasing more music.

“And so I decided, in order to keep that connection going,” she said , “if I couldn’t play live shows with you, I was going to make and release as many albums as humanly possible.”

That was two albums ago.

Ben Sisario covers the music industry. He has been writing for The Times since 1998. More about Ben Sisario

Inside the World of Taylor Swift

A Triumph at the Grammys: Taylor Swift made history  by winning her fourth album of the year at the 2024 edition of the awards, an event that saw women take many of the top awards .

‘The T ortured Poets Department’: Poets reacted to Swift’s new album name , weighing in on the pertinent question: What do the tortured poets think ?  

In the Public Eye: The budding romance between Swift and the football player Travis Kelce created a monocultural vortex that reached its apex  at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. Ahead of kickoff, we revisited some key moments in their relationship .

Politics (Taylor’s Version): After months of anticipation, Swift made her first foray into the 2024 election for Super Tuesday with a bipartisan message on Instagram . The singer, who some believe has enough influence  to affect the result of the election , has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.

Conspiracy Theories: In recent months, conspiracy theories about Swift and her relationship with Kelce have proliferated , largely driven by supporters of former President Donald Trump . The pop star's fans are shaking them off .